


Into the Light

by Cinnamongirl



Series: Find Your Way in the Dark [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Body Image, Class Issues, F/M, Jealousy, Oral Sex, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 12:51:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1605830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamongirl/pseuds/Cinnamongirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Humans and elves find Zevran sexy, but he doesn't live up to dwarf standards of attractiveness. He feels uncomfortable about this when he's in Orzammar with his dwarven girlfriend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

One of the first things Zevran noticed in Orzammar was that he felt tall. He had always been short, even by elven standards, so it was a novel experience. Orzammar was very different for him in many ways. With the ever-present walls and ceiling and flowing lava, there were limited areas where it was safe to walk. Zevran felt very exposed, which wasn't conducive to stealth. He hadn't been sure what to expect of dwarven culture and politics, but he certainly wasn't prepared for the ruthless emphasis on both power and the appearance of honor. It was almost like Orlais, but without the facade of beauty. 

Everyone was staring at their group. There seemed to be many people who recognized Sereda and had not expected her to be back in Orzammar. The strange assortment of people who followed her just made her more conspicuous. Zevran could tell that Sereda was very worried. He knew that she had been framed for her brother's murder and exiled. She was allowed to enter Orzammar because of the Grey Warden treaty, but she was still mistrusted and unpopular.

Sereda planned to support Harrowmont, but she had to pretend to support her brother in order to get close enough to confront him. To do this, they had to talk to a lot of different people. Zevran had never seen this many dwarves before. All of the men seemed to be heavy-set and muscular. He had expected soldiers to look like this, but even the merchants looked like they could probably tear him in half. When Zevran saw exposed arms or legs, he noticed that all of the dwarven men were hairy, even more so than human men. They all seemed to have beards. Zevran could certainly see the appeal behind the big and hairy look, and he'd had some very excellent sex with guys of this type, but he was suddenly and uncharacteristically self-conscious. It was strange how people who were so short could make him feel small. He idly wondered if they saw him as a nug; small and hairless with long ears.

The dwarven men were so much more masculine than him. Zevran didn't normally take traditional gender roles very seriously, probably because he had spent most of his life fucking and fighting alongside both men and women, but he found himself feeling inadequate. Even though it sounded like a bad joke that he normally would have made, Zevran couldn't help noticing that many of them carried huge two-handed axes that probably weighed more than he did. His daggers suddenly seemed very small by comparison. (At least he could take comfort in the fact that, even if his _dagger_ was little, Sereda had said on more than one occasion that she really enjoyed his _cock_.)

There were lots of good-looking dwarven women, too. They were curvy and many of them were very cute, but Zevran noted with some admiration that none of the women were as muscular as Sereda. He had said once that he fancied things that are beautiful and things that are strong, and Sereda was definitely both. Zevran hadn't met many people who were as strong as her. It was probably from wearing heavy armor and carrying a huge shield all the time. 

One of the places where they went to talk to people was somewhere called the Shaperate. Zevran learned that the dwarves kept track of every family and their history. He thought about his own mother, who had been a prostitute, and his father, who was a complete unknown. Zevran had always been very aware of who he was and where he had come from. He had learned a long time ago to wear it like armor, as they say, but it added to the overall feelings of inadequacy when he was surrounded by people who took lineage very seriously.

Sereda had told him once that he was only her third sex partner. The first one had been one of the merchants in Denerim. Zevran remembered purchasing a sword from him the last time he was in Denerim, before he met Sereda. The sword had been of good quality and the price was fair. He didn't remember much about the merchant, just that he yelled loudly and that he had been muscular and bearded like every other dwarven man. Her second partner had been Alistair, the bastard prince. He was also a very large, muscular man. They were sleeping together when Zevran first joined their group. This had made sense to Zevran. Even bastard princes have power, and it was natural that their lovely and talented leader would choose the partner with the highest status for herself. This didn't stop Zevran from flirting shamelessly with both of them, of course. Zevran would never admit it, but he was surprised when Sereda left Alistair and then expressed interest in Zevran himself. He joked about how inevitable it had been, but it ran contrary to everything he'd known that someone would choose him instead of a human, especially one with a noble background. Sereda had only said that she left Alistair because she realized that she didn't love him. The unspoken implication, of course, was that she did love Zevran. He found this flattering and confusing and slightly thrilling. 

Zevran had always known that he was fundamentally _less_ than human men. It didn't matter how many he killed, or how many of their wives he seduced. All of the noblemen who bedded him because “it's not gay if it's with an elf” didn't matter either, even if most of them begged Zevran to let them suck his cock and/or fuck them up roughly up the ass. No matter how many times the noble wives told him that he pleased them in ways that their husbands never had, they would just go on to find new human men to marry after he or someone else killed their husbands. Even in the Crows, where everyone was ostensibly equal, one of the reasons why he had been purchased in the first place was because humans find elves appealing. Zevran became skilled at identifying whether a human saw him as a servant, dirty knife-eared thief, or fetish object and then playing the part convincingly in order to accomplish his goal, but he knew that he was never considered an equal.

They had to go into the Deep Roads. Sereda seemed very uncomfortable, even though she wasn't normally bothered by darkspawn or giant spiders. She started wondering out loud if Harrowmont would actually be a good king, and eventually decided to support her brother, instead. Zevran didn't particularly care either way. He was pretty sure that all politicians and royalty were just interchangeable figureheads who are controlled from the shadows until they eventually get assassinated, but he trusted Sereda's judgment.

Even when they were away from civilization, Zevran was still lost in thought. For all of his bravado and narcissism, he did realize that there were actually people in Thedas who didn't find him attractive. True, he managed to win many of them over in the end, but some people just didn't fancy him. This had never bothered Zevran before. Why worry about the people who won't sleep with him when there are plenty more who will? He tried to remember this when he caught himself feeling self-conscious. He didn't have any claim on Sereda. If she would prefer to be with another dwarf, that was her prerogative. Still, it bothered him. Zevran realized that he wanted to be good enough for Sereda; wanted her to like him. This only made him more uncomfortable.


	2. Chapter 2

After they returned from the Deep Roads, it was difficult to find somewhere to spend the night. They couldn't very well set up camp in the middle of the merchant district, but most of the taverns wouldn't accept Sereda once they recognized her. She was walking stiffly and Zevran could tell that she was getting increasingly tense. He reached down to hold her hand. She took it and smiled up at him. He couldn't see as much of her body through the armor, but her walk became more relaxed after that. They finally found an inn owned by someone who had been loyal to Sereda's father and was convinced of her innocence. She raised her eyebrows when she saw Sereda holding hands with Zevran. “This is my friend Zevran,” Sereda said by way of introduction. “He's an assassin from the surface who is helping me gather an army to stop the Blight.” The innkeeper didn't comment further but she had an odd facial expression when Sereda said that she and Zevran would be sharing a room. 

He decided to bring the subject up when they were alone together. “As handsome as I am, of course, I can't help but notice that I don't look like any of the fine men here. I find it curious that you would want someone so different from those who you grew up with.”

“To be honest, I thought you were weird-looking when I first met you, but eventually I decided that I like it.”

Zevran had a joke ready on his tongue about how she was inevitably seduced by him even if she tried to resist at first. Instead, his face fell. “If you do not find me attractive then-”

“I don't want to hear about it right now, okay?” she snapped, interrupting him. “You're the physical ideal that everybody on the surface wants, with your nice legs and pouty lips and high cheekbones, so I really don't need to hear complaints about the one place where people aren't tripping over each other to get to you.” 

As nice as it was to listen to her list off his best features, she was obviously upset. “That was thoughtless of me, I apologize,” he said.

Sereda rubbed a hand over her face. “I just want to go to sleep. I'm not looking forward to tomorrow.” 

The next day, they had to go somewhere called Dust Town to defeat a crime lord. The dwarves there didn't seem to care as much about Sereda's history, but they still stared at the rest of the group. Zevran realized that if he had been born a dwarf, he would have lived here in the slums. They even had tattoos on their faces like he did. He still felt the insecurity prickling at the back of his mind, but he was more concerned about disarming traps before Sereda walked into them and noticing the thugs that were behind almost every corner before they could ambush her.

Once Jarvia was dead, Bhelen apparently trusted Sereda enough to let her stay in the palace. They were conspicuously given rooms in the guest quarters ("in case I forgot that I don't live here anymore," Sereda said), but they were apparently trusted enough to wander around freely in most of the palace. Sereda showed Zevran a large, ornately decorated room. “This was my bedroom,” she explained. She was blinking more frequently and breathing through her mouth. She stared at the floor without saying anything else. Zevran put an arm around her shoulders. Sereda leaned into him for a few seconds, and then abruptly moved away and grabbed him by the front of his armor. “Come on,” she said. He followed obediently, but she still dragged him the rest of the way back to their room. 

Once they were inside, she immediately started taking off her armor. “You need to strip, too.” She gestured to Zevran, who complied. He had noticed that Sereda sometimes got bossy when she was under a lot of stress. He usually didn't mind. Once they were undressed, she gestured to the bed. “Get over here and go down on me,” she said in the same voice that she used when giving orders in battle. She also sometimes got horny when she was under a lot of stress. Zevran never minded this.

She lay down on the bed and he moved his face between her legs. He licked her everywhere and thrust his tongue inside a few times before settling on her clit. Sereda grabbed his hair and held his head in place while he rubbed his tongue back and forth. She made soft wailing noises that he found very arousing. After a few minutes, she pulled on his hair and said, “Get up here.” Zevran moved his body so that he was poised above her. She bucked her hips so that she rubbed against his cock, and they both moaned. She made eye contact and grinned. “Fuck me,” she said, quietly but with authority. 

Zevran pressed Sereda's body down into the bed as his cock entered her. His whole body shuddered at the sudden sensation of tightness and warmth. Zevran went in and out slowly at first to let her body adjust, then started going harder and faster when she pushed back against him. He bent his head down to kiss her. She kissed back, passionately, and smiled at him. Zevran felt Sereda's hand trying to move between them. “Hey, can you move up so I have some access?” she asked. Zevran tilted his body so that he was more perpendicular. He grabbed her hips and fucked her while she rubbed her clit. Zevran moved one of his hands to her breast. He massaged it gently and flicked the nipple back and forth, which made her moan and bite her lip. Sereda had especially nice breasts, he thought. They were probably the only soft part of her body. Her figure was normally covered by bulky armor, and Zevran felt honored to be allowed to see what she looked like underneath it. She looked good in armor, of course, but he had to admit that she looked better when she was naked and panting, with her hair everywhere. The occasional cries of “Harder, Zev!” sent spikes of arousal through him. Finally, and after not nearly enough time, he heard her say “Fuck, I'm coming!” The hand on her clit rubbed vigorously while the other one clenched in the bedspread and her whole body pulsed for a few seconds. Zevran paused to watch, almost awestruck. When her climax had passed, he started thrusting again and let the sensation build up until he came inside her with a gasp. 

Zevran sat down beside Sereda. “Thanks,” she laughed. “I think I needed that.”

He smirked as he bowed. “I am always at your service.”

“Seriously, though,” she said, “I'm sorry about what I said last night. I think with everything that's going on, I'm just really not in the mood to be sympathetic right now.”

“Do you wish to talk about it?” he asked. After all, he was the one who should be sympathetic after everything she had lost. 

She groaned but she looked grateful. “It's actually not as bad as I thought it would be. There aren't as many people trying to kill me, for one thing.” Zevran raised an eyebrow as he thought of the groups of Harrowmont supporters who had ambushed them in the streets and the all of the carta members who had attacked them on sight. Sereda continued, “It's really hard to deal with the fact that this isn't my home anymore. The attractiveness thing doesn't help. I'm only good-looking in Orzammar.”

“You are beautiful everywhere,” Zevran cut in. He knew that this wasn't the point she was trying to make, but it needed to be said.

Sereda rolled her eyes and smiled a little. “Okay, but everyone else on the surface likes women who look like Leliana and Morrigan. I'm too short and I have too much muscle and too much fat and my nose is too big. I know there are more important things than being attractive--like ending the Blight, for example--but that doesn't make it easier.”

“I think,” Zevran said, “we both need to stop comparing ourselves to humans.”

Sereda looked happier at that. “Didn't we decide that they're weird, anyway?” 

“Very weird," Zevran said, solemnly. "So, we can agree that we are both ridiculously sexy, yes?” 

Sereda laughed, and it continued up to her eyes this time. “Yes, we definitely are.”

-

After Sereda crowned Bhelen, he restored her status as an Aeducan. Zevran asked her what she thought of it once Bhelen was out of earshot. “This just proves that destroying our family and sending me to my death was nothing personal. Now that I'm not in a position to hurt him, he has no problem being nice to me.”

“Do you regret making him king?”

“No. I think he'll be good for Orzammar. I'm just not looking forward to seeing him again when I come back here to report back to Dagna.” She looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “It's weird to think that it was so painful to lose my caste and my home and everything, but now that I don't need it anymore, I get it back.” 

When they stepped outside, Oghren had trouble adjusting to being on the surface. Zevran looked at Sereda. “Yeah, it was like that for me, too, at first. It feels normal, now.” She was smiling but her eyes looked sad. Zevran put an arm across her shoulders in a side hug. “Thanks,” she said. She looked at Oghren. “Are you ready to go?” When he agreed, she said “I promise it gets easier.”

“It better,” Oghren grumbled.

“Come on,” she said to Zevran.

“I am yours,” he replied, because it was all he could give her. He hoped that it would be enough.


End file.
